中文導讀
作為全球肉雞供應鏈的一環，中國在享受著產業發展成果的同時，也存在過度依賴他國技術的隱患。今年9月，國務院出臺關於畜牧業發展的意見，提出要實現畜牧業基本自足，同時將白羽雞育種攻關列為工作重點。然而，從零開始培育本土的種雞將面臨重重挑戰，這不僅依靠生物科技創新，還需要在動物衛生免疫、環境控制等方面多下功夫。
To see why China may struggle to achieve high-tech self-reliance, visit an industrial chicken farm
IT TAKES AN effort—a small hardening of the heart—to see day-old Jinghai Poultry chicks for what they are. These, for all their plaintive cheeping and soft, fuzzy plumage, are tiny, high-performance meat factories. The product of decades of genetic research in American and European laboratories, they hatch in China thanks to global supply chains, involving the air-freighting of eggs and chicks between secure breeding sites on five continents.
Those chains are more fragile than once supposed. Animal diseases, the US-China trade war and covid-19 have all disrupted, or threatened to disrupt, industrial chicken supplies. That makes those chicks a window onto something interesting: China’s increasingly complicated relationship with high-tech globalisation, a force that has made the country more prosperous, but also reliant on the outside world.
The unsentimental logic of high-performance poultry-rearing is easy to grasp. Standing this week in the loading bay of a factory farm in the coastal province of Jiangsu, Chaguan heard Jinghai executives explain how 「white-feather meat chickens」, as they are known in China, grow to 2.5kg in 40 days. Homegrown varieties of 「yellow-feather chicken」, descended from backyard fowl, take twice as long to mature and will only ever weigh half as much. Clients collect cardboard trays holding 102 chicks, peeking through slats in the sides. Four trays can generate a tonne of chicken.
Nor is China’s interest in cheap protein mysterious. Half a century ago meat was a rare luxury. Now, many see it as a daily necessity. In the meantime, the country’s supplies of farmland and clean water have not grown. Agriculture remains blighted by food-safety scandals, the rampant use of fake or illegal animal medicines, and disease outbreaks. Small surprise, then, that Chinese leaders give frequent speeches about food security. A puzzle lurks, though. Leaders also call for self-reliance in key technologies. And in the case of broiler chickens, those two ambitions—rearing meat efficiently and avoiding dependence on imports—are in tension.
The chicks cheeping at Chaguan are the fifth-generation descendants of pedigree birds whose bloodlines represent 80 years of selection for such traits as efficient food-to-meat conversion, rapid growth, strong leg bones and disease resistance. After waves of consolidation, the industry is dominated by two firms, Aviagen (based in Alabama and owned by the EW Group of Germany) and Cobb (owned by Tyson, an American poultry giant).
The most valuable pedigree birds never leave maximum-security farms in America and Britain: a single pedigree hen may generate 4m direct descendants. Their second-generation offspring are flown to breeding sites dispersed between such places as Brazil, Britain and New Zealand, in part to hedge against supply shocks when avian influenzas and other diseases close borders. Day-old third-generation chicks are air-freighted to local partners such as Jinghai, which spend six months growing them and breeding them in climate-controlled, artificially lit indoor facilities. In all, China imports 1.6m third-generation white-feather chicks a year.
Jinghai hatches 8m fourth-generation, 「parent stock」 chickens annually. The company sells some to other agri-businesses. It breeds from the rest to produce fifth-generation chicks like those cheeping at Chaguan. These are 「meat chickens」, consumed in fast-food outlets, schools and factory canteens, or as chicken parts sold in supermarkets. Yellow-feather chickens, deemed tastier by Chinese cooks, account for most whole birds sold in markets.
Chinese breeders have long tried to create local varieties with bloodlines available in-country. Breeding from imported third- or fourth-generation chickens is a bad solution: their genes are less desirable than those of their elite grandparents, making them a poor starting-point for a new variety. In September the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a paper on livestock-rearing that set self-sufficiency in poultry as a goal, calling meat-chicken breeding a priority. Big foreign firms have resisted appeals from officials to send second-generation stock to China. A poultry firm with 10% of the domestic market, Fujian Sunner, says it has bred all-Chinese broilers: their performance is a source of some debate.
Dependence on foreign bloodlines does carry risks. For several months recently New Zealand was one of the only countries able to send third-generation chicks to China, after other exporters suffered bird-flu outbreaks. Li Jinghui, president of the China Broiler Alliance, an industry association, calls conditions ripe for China’s 「brilliant」 scientists to develop local birds. Mr Li adds that Chinese diners do not share the West’s love of breast meat and think chicken feet a delicacy, so that Chinese-bred broilers might have bigger thighs and feet. But Mr Li suggests that the government’s aim is diversifying meat supplies, rather than literal self-sufficiency. Let Chinese and foreign chicken breeds compete like Huawei and Apple smartphones, he urges: market forces should decide the result.
Don’t even ask about animal rights
Wang Hongsheng, a boss at Jinghai, admits to fretting about interruptions to chick supplies, even wondering if President Donald Trump might curb American exports. But to develop a domestic breed from scratch would take years, and if it does not meet market needs, a firm could spend a fortune 「without much to show for it」.
High-tech chickens are not as sleek as high-speed trains or as clever as quantum computers. Still, they are a case study of why self-reliance is hard. China’s poultry market has room to grow: Westerners each eat far more chicken than Chinese do. But without a stronger animal-health system and environmental controls, biotechnology alone cannot help China to develop world-class agriculture. Moreover, a long-standing Chinese strategy—bullying foreign firms to hand over intellectual property—is counter-productive now. Western trust in China is low, and official talk of self-sufficiency is one cause. The politics of globalisation get tricky when one side feels it is being readied for the pot. ■
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Oct 31st 2020 • China • 946 words
文章第十段最後一句話「... a firm could spend a fortune 「without much to show for it」."中的 without much to show for it 作何解釋？注意這裡用到了 (have) something, nothing, etc. 這一習語，表示「在…方面有（或沒有等）成績；在…方面有（或沒有等）結果」，英文釋義為 to show for sth (to have) something, nothing, etc. as a result of sth，看一個例句：All those years of hard work, and nothing to show for it! 苦幹這麼多年，卻毫無成績可言！而文中這句話就是在說，從零開始培育一種本土品種需要數年的時間，而且如果不能滿足市場需求，一家公司可能會花一大筆錢卻「沒有多少回報」。(查看每日主推更多講解，歡迎加入《閱讀訓練營》，踏踏實實提升閱讀理解能力，詞彙量過八千，隨來隨學)
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本文全文摘選自The Economist/《經濟學人》(Oct 31st, 2020)，僅供個人學習交流使用。歡迎轉發至朋友圈。商業轉載請在正文前註明「本文來自新英文雜誌公眾號」。
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